mcbridematt.dhs.org

For anyone who is trying to set up a Gentoo container under lxc manually, and not having any luck:

• Set rc_sys="lxc" in /etc/rc.conf in your container
• Manually create /dev/pts
• and /dev/shm

Traditionally the third-party client of choice for connecting to Cisco IPSec based VPNs on Unix has been vpnc. Unfortunately, while it connects successfully in my situation, there were issues with vpnc being unable to hold a stable connection. racoon is used as the Cisco VPN client on Mac OS X, which is very reliable. This document will detail configuring racoon to connect to a Cisco VPN on FreeBSD.

I was testing an OpenVZ VPS from a provider who didn't have any Gentoo installation images, so I wanted to replace the Debian installation provided with a Gentoo one. It needed to be done entirely over SSH (with the SolusVM serial console to augment it).

Here is how I managed to get my Ralink-based WIFI stick working in access point mode with WPA encryption.

• Hardware used: TP-Link TL-WN321G
• System: Gentoo

Read on for more..

Got a Blackberry? Having trouble getting the POS to access servers over WiFi? Connects but can't ping the Blackberry from other hosts on the same wireless network?

The issue appears to be a buggy WMM mode on the Blackberry and/or access point chipset (Atheros or Broadcom).

On OpenWRT powered access points/routers this can be fixed by disabling WMM mode.

Add

option wmm 0

So, you want to encode some video, and run Gentoo, but the handbrake ebuild either doesn't work or is too scary. They only have packages for Ubuntu or Fedora, but don't despair, we can use the Ubuntu package on Gentoo with a bit of detective work.

# Rebuild udev with extras so libgudev is present
echo "sys-fs/udev extras" >> /etc/portage/package.use
emerge udev

# Get the latest handbrake nightly build for ubuntu
cd /tmp
wget http://ppa.launchpad.net/stebbins/handbrake-snapshots/ubuntu/pool/main/h/handbrake/handbrake-gtk_svn3428ppa1~lucid1_i386.deb
ar x handbrake-gtk_svn3428ppa1~lucid1_i386.deb data.tar.bz2

# Extract it
cd /
tar -jxvf /tmp/data.tar.bz2

The technique of extracting data.tar.gz or data.tar.bz2 out of the .deb will work for other .deb-only binaries you can find as well

Performed on the us-west cluster on spot instances using Geekbench

• m1.small - 1497
• m1.large - 2897
• MacBook Pro i5 520M 2.4GHz - 4728
• Core Solo 1.66GHz - 1562
• Core Duo 1.60GHz - 1894

Honestly, the only thing good about m1.small and m1.large is spot instance pricing and loads of RAM. Otherwise GoGrid (which I've used myself) and Rackspace Cloud Servers seem to be much better

While the Android Calendar application is part of the source code for Android, it is not included in the SDK Emulator image.

It turns out this is for a rather good reason: They are useless on their own. Android Calendar is tied into Google Apps. You can't have a standalone calendar.

In the hope these instructions will help somebody else:

1. Get the Android source code and build it
2. The Calendar.apk and CalendarProvider.apk files are in out/target/product/generic/system/app/
3. You can install these into the emulator using adb install <filename>

UPDATE (18th May):Here are the two APK's for those interested:

• Calendar.apk
• CalendarProvider.apk

There are multiple ways one can run multiple instances of Linux on a server, from entire system virtualization such as VMware, Xen (to a lesser extent) to operating system level virtualization such as UML, OpenVZ and Linux-VServer.

The last three require some kernel magic that isn't in mainline kernels. Linux-VServer (and probably OpenVZ) needs a lot of kernel modification.

Other operating systems ship similar 'containerisation' mechanisms as standard, notably Solaris Containers and FreeBSD jails.

libnfc is a library for communicating with ISO14443 RFID tags. You might know these things for their use in smart card ticketing systems such as Oyster, Octopus, Snapper and myki. But they are also present in other forms such as photocopy cards, student ID's, building access controls* and passports. Two forms of ISO14443 dominate: Felica, which debuted in Hong Kong's Octopus RFID ticket and spread across Asia soon after, and Mifare, which dominates just about everything else.